Wednesday, 18 February 2009

The old adage is proved again: give 'em enough time and they'll come round.

The Beeb's biodrama of the glorious Margaret has been seen by Letts of the Mail, and it does not look, walk, or quack like the lefty chippy duck it promised to be.

True, Lindsay Duncan, who I rate as a terrific actress, said that she 'hated' Thatcher before she made the film, but - blow me! - found that there was a bit more to her than the typical knee-jerk luvvie attitudes which were, I suppose, the only views on Thatcher poor Duncan had ever heard.

So, having planned to watch the prog next week through gritted teeth, green-ink pen in hand, I'm now looking forward to it.

Reagan first, Margaret second.... the left-wing view of history is gradually being revised. Give it twenty years, when Iraq is a lovely place to live and friendly to its neighbours, and they might even show Dubya as the kindly, thoughtful, far-sighted statesman that some of his friends assure me he is.

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WS Churchill's Words of Warning:

"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves".

Too True

"That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European superstate was ever embarked upon will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era.”

The All-Time Best Daily Mash

Idle

On Limited Government

"We are a nation with a government, not the other way round".

Reagan, inaugural speech, Jan 20 1981

(Interim) Last Word on the Subject

Stated briefly, I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest.

Prof Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Atmospheric Brainbox of the World